Never Always Sometimes

by Adi Alsaid

  o o o

  At seven Julia walked over to Dave and squatted by him, flicking the tip of his nose. “I’m awake,” he said.

  “Yes. And I am flicking your nose. Shall we continue to update one another on our activities?”

  “As long as you promise to exclude any Marroney-related updates,” Dave said, taking off the sunglasses he’d been wearing.

  “Deal,” she said. “I’m gonna go shower. I left out a towel for you in case you want to use the dads’ bathroom to shower, too.” She flicked his nose again. “You ready to celebrate your unlikeliest of victories?”

  “I was conceived ready.”

  She stood up and looked around the yard as if assessing it, then turned toward the house. “If anyone shows up while I’m upstairs, tell them they’re unfashionably early and then mock them until they feel ostracized.”

  “Will do,” Dave said.

  The sky was starting to darken into purple, the few clouds that had survived the heat of the afternoon took on shades of gold. Dave stayed on the grass, watching the sky, unable to muster the inertia to move until night had finally settled in. He tried not to think about Gretchen but that inertia was hard to overcome, too, so he went into the house and changed into the shirt he’d brought with him for the party.

  Julia had hung a banner in the kitchen that read,

  IN HONOR OF THE GREAT AND VENERABLE POTENTIAL PROM KING DAVE “THAT’S NOT MY NAME” GUTIERREZ.

  Cans of beer were strategically placed throughout the house for drunk people to stumble into as the night progressed. “We may be embracing clichés, but we’re allowed to make them ours,” Julia said with that mischievous smile. Some were on the bookshelves, one on top of each blade of the fan in the living room, in drawers and the microwave and in between the couch cushions. Julia had set out bowls of chips surrounded by assorted dips. Some of the dips weren’t actual dips, another experiment Julia had been dying to try for years. She had set out hot sauces and butter and soy sauce and a little melted puddle of vanilla ice cream, just to see how many people would dip their chips into anything that was nearby.

  By the time people started showing up, Dave and Julia had crossed off another Never and toasted with a minibottle of champagne Julia had nabbed from the wedding she’d gone to the weekend before. They argued for about twenty minutes over what kind of music to play, since Julia insisted that she had good party music, and Dave insisted that people would not enjoy listening to Fiona Apple, no matter how brilliant her lyrics were. Julia texted some photos of the setup to her mom and was checking her phone constantly for a response when the doorbell rang.

  “Welcome!” Julia said to the first group that arrived, three somewhat nerdy juniors with copycat shaggy hair. “Beer!”

  “Uh, thanks,” the taller of them said, though they didn’t enter until Dave waved them in. As soon as Julia shut the door, Dave could hear voices on the other side. Dave went back to the door as Julia led the shaggy juniors to the kitchen, rambling in a fake Victorian English accent about the glory of the night.

  Within an hour, the house was packed. Because it kept him from looking at the entrance awaiting Gretchen’s arrival, Dave tried to clean up after people, collecting the empty beer cans and the red plastic cups that Julia had purchased entirely too many of. Then Julia scolded him, telling him that making a mess of her parents’ place was part of the idea, and that he was robbing her of a typical high school experience.

  “Mingle with your people,” she said, snatching the garbage bag away from his hand and hanging it off the corner of a picture frame, which instantly tipped and came crashing to the ground. “These people came for you.”

  “They came for the beer.”

  “You can’t prove that. Your face on the flyer was just as big as the word beer was.”

  “True. Have I told you how uncomfortable that made me?”

  “Oh, being loved by the masses is so hard,” Julia said, frowning exaggeratedly. “I’m gonna go make sure Debbie is still mostly white and green and pink and alive.” She headed for the stairs, sidestepping the pillow fort that they’d built at the foot to keep people from venturing upstairs. Almost as soon as she’d turned down the hallway, Dave felt a tap on his shoulder.

  “Gretchen! Hi.” He leaned in to give her a hug, and somehow his lips ended up on her cheek, close to her mouth, way more sensual than he’d meant to. It took them both a little by surprise, and nothing was said for a while. Someone took hold of the music and switched it over to rap, the bass booming through the house.

  “Hi,” she said, her hand going to the spot he’d awkwardly kissed. She’d done her hair in a braid that hung over her shoulder, exposing her neck on the opposite side. A trace of collarbone poked out from her blouse. It was so different picturing someone’s face all day and then being up close to it. It was like the difference between seeing a picture of a beach and stepping onto the sand. “This is insane; there are so many people here.”

  “Oh, Julia and I hired a bunch of desperate actors from L.A. None of these people are actually teenagers.”

  Gretchen bit her bottom lip and looked down at her scuffed sneakers for a second. When she didn’t say anything for a while, he said that it was too crowded inside and that they should go to the backyard. He led her through the crowd, slowly squeezing between random, isolated dance-offs and couples already making out. At the kitchen table, Joey Planko was sitting in just his underwear, organizing some sort of drinking game that involved a deck of cards and a beer mug in the middle of the table. Girls were sitting two to a chair to join in on the game.

  Outside, someone had started a bonfire in the middle of the yard. Which was impressive and a little worrying, considering that Julia’s house had neither a fire pit nor firewood. Someone standing by the fire finished his beer and tossed the can into the fire, where it immediately crumpled in on itself. Dave and Gretchen caught up to Vince at one of the kegs. He’d just finished pouring a cup, and when he noticed the two of them he immediately handed it off to Gretchen and poured another two.

  “Congrats on getting on the ballot, man,” Vince said. “That was pretty badass what you guys did. Just the idea to build a tree house on school property is ballsy. Were you high?”

  “Nope,” Dave laughed.

  “The tree house is so great,” Gretchen said, nodding. She sipped shyly from her beer and looked around the party. She looked so lovely, and he wished they were elsewhere, some place they could be alone.

  “Well, all the more credit to you. I don’t know why you’ve been hiding these past four years of high school, but I wish you’d shown yourself earlier. It’s a shame everyone’s figuring out how cool you are this late.”

  “I can’t imagine how many cool things you and Julia have done,” Gretchen said. She was holding her cup with both hands and smiling, but she didn’t meet Dave’s eyes. “Be honest, how many times have you saved the world from imminent destruction?”

  “Once or twice,” Dave said, mustering a smile. He spotted Julia coming outside, yelling, “All right, which of you bastards fed my cat cheese puffs?” She made her way around the party, checking people’s hands for evidence, finally stopping to chat with the Kapoor triplets, who were wearing different shades of the same pastel polo shirt, the collars, of course, popped.

  Dave, Gretchen, and Vince stood in their little circle. Gretchen and Vince started talking about some project for their French class. Dave took constant, tiny sips of his beer, the mild bitterness coating his tongue. He looked up at the sky, where clouds were rolling in to cover up the stars. It felt like all he could do was stand there, and that even if it started to rain he wouldn’t be able to move. He was tired of inaction, tired of not having learned a thing from years of sitting still. It built up in him, like the desire to kiss Gretchen had on their date, but this time more powerful, more urgent. As if this was his
last chance, a momentous fork in the road. If he chose inaction now, inaction it would be for the rest of his life.

  “Hey, Vince, you mind if I talk to Gretchen for a sec?”

  Vince stopped talking midsentence. “Uh, sure, man.” He gave Gretchen a look and then made his way toward the house.

  “Sorry if I interrupted that,” Dave said. He picked a leaf that had fallen into his beer and flicked it onto the grass. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the other night.”

  Gretchen shifted her weight from one foot to another. She looked down at the grass, too. If there was one thing Dave would ask of adults at that moment it was why people his age were constantly looking down at the ground, and if they would ever grow out of it. “You don’t have to, Dave, it’s okay. I get it.” She shrugged and smiled, a smile that felt somehow rehearsed, like the way he’d kept it in mind on their date at the harbor to compliment her looks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s okay; I get that you’re with Julia. I’m sorry if I came on too strong.” Her smile faded to more of a lopsided grin. The hand not holding her beer reached across to her elbow, the turquoise ring catching a glint from the backyard lights. “I still like spending time with you, so—”

  “I’m not with Julia,” Dave said. Across the party, Julia was trying to unpop the Kapoors’ collars, yelling something. “It’s not like that.”

  Gretchen looked up at him just for a second. Her expression gave nothing away. Or it did, and he simply wasn’t familiar enough with her face to catch its subtle changes; he couldn’t read her silences the way he could read Julia’s. “You kind of act like you’re together,” Gretchen said with another shrug that spilled a blob of foamy beer down to the grass. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me. It’s okay. I’ll learn how to pull pranks some other way.”

  Dave had never seen someone who smiled this often, in such a variety of ways. She looked sad and embarrassed and still managed an honest smile. It felt insane, all of a sudden, how long he’d been reaching for Julia. And if not insane, then too long by exactly four days. Tuesday night, watching a movie with Gretchen, that was the exact moment he should have let go for good. “I’m not with Julia,” he said again.

  “Dave, it’s okay—” she said, but he didn’t let her continue. He dropped his beer to the ground, ignoring the way it splashed at his feet and soaked his legs, and he finally kissed Gretchen.

  She tasted like honey, too. Her lips were warm and soft and wet, all the descriptions he’d read and heard and imagined a thousand times, sure. But they were so much more than that. They were real, and wonderful.

  AGAINST THE CURRENT

  WHEN THE PARTY had mostly cleared out—excepting the few people passed out on couches or in the pillow fort at the foot of the stairs, plus a couple making out in the yard—Dave and Julia started going about the task of making the house somewhat presentable before the dads returned from Napa in the morning.

  “I’d say that was a success,” Julia said, grabbing cans and tossing them into a garbage bag. Dave was searching the house for cups that people had tossed aside, the taste of Gretchen’s kiss still on his lips, a warmth inside him that loomed much larger than the buzzed, in-love-with-the-world feeling from the Kapoor party. That had been a flame, and this was a fire.

  “Yeah, pretty great turnout. Maybe we’ve been wrong all this time about what makes someone a good beer host. I thought being from Bangladesh and having hundreds of siblings was a requirement, but it turns out you have what it takes, too.”

  “I think the only real requirement is vast quantities of alcohol and a house to put it all in. And the attendance of a man on the cusp of celebrity such as yourself to lure in the masses, of course.” Julia kicked at the charred remains of the bonfire, then used a log that hadn’t been burned to scoop some of the cans into her bag. “The dads are going to empty my college fund when they see this. Good thing they already emptied it out for their restaurant venture! Student loans here I come.”

  When Dave didn’t say anything—he was still recalling how he’d kissed Gretchen good night at the front door before she left, the smile on her face—Julia said, “Just kidding, I’m a little drunk. I’m sure they were always planning on making me get student loans.”

  Dave took their garbage bags to the curb, then came back and grabbed new ones from beneath the sink. Julia was already in the kitchen, examining the remains of the chips and dips. “Gnarly, someone ate all of the butter.” She brought the bowls to the sink and dropped them in with a clatter. Whoever it was that had fallen asleep on the couch moaned in complaint at the sound. “Never mind, it’s all right here on the carpet.”

  Dave rustled his fresh garbage bag to get it to open up. He slid in some crumbs and a couple of cups from the kitchen table, then took a seat on one of the chairs, staring off into the distance. “Hey, did you notice that Gretchen was here?”

  “Yeah,” Julia said, picking with a fingernail at something on the kitchen counter. “I saw you two being chummy. You running for student council, too? Prom queen? Mayor? You’re running for mayor? I’ve created an ambitious, power-hungry monster. Forgive me, world!” She giggled, then walked toward the living room. “Well, shit. Maybe the beers on the ceiling fan were not a good idea.”

  Dave followed her gaze to a beer can that had lodged itself in the drywall. “Yikes.”

  Julia walked up to the beer in the wall, studying it, as if afraid that if she tried to pull it out the whole house would come crumbling down. “There’s a joke here about how alcohol kills; I just don’t have it yet.”

  Dave took a deep breath. “I like Gretchen,” he said.

  “Don’t drink and fan? No, that doesn’t make sense,” Julia said. She scrunched her mouth to one side of her face, thoughtful. “Can-cer. Beer. Something about holes?” Julia’s arms dropped to her sides. “Eh, I’ve got nothing.” She turned back toward Dave. “What were you saying about Gretchen?”

  “Nothing. I just think she’s cool,” Dave said, suddenly feeling tired.

  “Cool as a cardboard cutout.” Julia chuckled.

  Dave hid the scowl that he could feel forming by fiddling with the trash bag in his hand. Julia was drunk; he should take what she was saying with a grain of salt.

  “You know, at the Kapoors’, I was pretty entertained by how lame everyone was. Tonight it just seemed sad. I had the exact same conversation with three people. Whole sentences were repeated. It’s like the same person is writing all their dialogue.”

  “I’m sure that’s an exaggeration.”

  “Dave, you know I swore off hyperbole a thousand years ago.” Julia grabbed a nearby beer can and walked over to the kitchen, pouring out the contents into the sink. “So, what did you and cool-as-a-cutout Gretchen talk about? Let me guess,” she called out from behind him. “Summer plans and how great college is going to be and how she totally prefers the shitty beer we had tonight to other kinds of shitty beer.”

  Dave forced a laugh. “Clearly, you’ve never had a conversation with her.”

  “Why would I want to?” Julia came back into the living room holding a cup of water, which she drank from in great big gulps.

  He thought about every wonderful thing he’d learned about Gretchen. About her favorite song by Clem Snide, how she took care of her brother, how she actually tried to live by what she believed in, leaving the world a little better than she found it. If Julia knew that, she’d appreciate her, Dave knew. He just had to say it the right way to make her see. “Gretchen and I...” Dave started. “I’ve seen her a couple of times outside of school now, and I really like her. A lot. I thought you should know.”

  Julia was quiet for a few moments, her back to him, finishing her glass of water. She turned around slowly, smirking. “Oh, Dave, seriously? I mean, I know we’re embracing clichés, but Gretchen Powers?”

 
; He grabbed a plastic cup that was under the chair he was sitting on and dropped it into his trash bag. “She’s not a cliché, Julia.”

  “The blond chick who’s on the soccer team and dates older guys with tattoos and smiles at everyone like she’s best friends with the whole fucking world? Ha!” Julia turned back to the wall and pulled the beer can out of the drywall, which crumbled and now had a gaping hole. She wiped off the top of the can with her shirt and popped it open, foam rising with a hiss over her hand and spilling on the carpet. “I bet she volunteers somewhere really snappy to get her college application super shiny.”

  “There’s more to her than meets the eye,” Dave said quietly. “There’s more to most of these people than you realize; you’re just too busy making fun of everyone to see it.”

  “Whoa there, defender of the popular.” She went back to picking up trash from around the living room, reaching for a cup that was tucked under the head of the guy passed out on the love seat. “So, when did the other side win you over?”

  “It’s not about that.” Dave sighed. “Seriously, Gretchen is great. You’d like her if you made the effort.”

  “Okay, next student council meeting I’ll sit next to her.”

  “What’s so wrong about student council?”

  “Yikes. What’s so great about this girl that you’ll stand up for student council on her behalf?”

  Dave leaned back in the chair, running a hand through the little that remained of his hair. “Look, I kissed her. We’ve had a couple of dates. And yeah, she’s great. You’d think so, too, if you spent a little time with her instead of judging her from afar.”

  “By great, do you mean pretty? ’Cause I’ll give you that, the girl’s pretty.”

  “No, I mean great.”

  “Wonderful. You made out with one of the cool kids; I’m happy for you.”